Writing Tips and Reviews

Ranting about Bad Writing: Story Creation 101

When your world building is akin to flipping channels on TV, writing down the one thing you remember from each channel, putting no effort into tying it together, and calling it a masterpiece, then you suck at writing and need to go back to school.

I'm going to bring up the story from the last Ranting about Bad Writing, which is the "Song of Nature". For those who need a recap, it's about an entitled spoiled brat who has everything in life but wants more because it's not enough. The story ends at her going on an adventure that never has her grow as a person and only gives her magic, which gives her more things she wants. It's not particularly good if you ask anyone who's not the creator.

Adding things randomly:

One thing that's always bothered me with these types of writers, idiots, is that they tend to add random crap and never do anything good with it. As I said in the last entry, the magic book plot could have been handled well, it could have been a parallel world that taught Raine to be a decent human being.

Which would give it a real purpose over "I have no idea what I'm doing so I'm going to default into a magic book plot that goes nowhere." If you add something in, give it a purpose, the world shouldn't feel like it's underdeveloped and had no thought put in it. Wastelands have more thought put into it than throwing a magic book at the reader's face and expecting them to come up with good ideas so you can steal it.

I add in things like how the world looks, how it functions, what the inhabitants wear, the shops, the town square, etc. because I give a shit about the readers. Sure, not all of it is important to the plot, but it is there for a reason. Competent writers know how to add things in and give them a purpose. I'm sure your room has a bed, a desk, a drawer, and a closet, and those are the minimum for a bedroom. I have paintings, a bookshelf, a bird cage, and bird toys in my room. All that have a purpose, they make the room livelier and some have a function in my daily life.

If you just add crap and never think to do anything with it, then why does it exist? If there's an alternative solution that makes better sense, why not use it? Raine went on this entire journey keeping this book, which she believes is evil, with her and nothing comes out of it.

Characters are evil for the sake of being evil:

Raine's mom ended up being evil, did this have any impact on the story? Is the magic book corrupting her? Is that why Raine doesn't have more than what she already has? None of those, it was added in there and then forgotten about completely. I didn't even remember it was a thing until I read it again.

That's bad writing. Really bad writing. The only clue might have been her mom calling her out for cheating, but wouldn't any good parent do that if they found out their kid was cheating? If that's the clue to her being evil, then that's bullshit, that's trying to make the character look like a victim to evil in the stupidest way possible. It's vilifying any parent that stops their kid from cheating, which is not good.

You need to think about these things before you do them. "Solomon" from Fate Grand Order is clearly shown to be evil, he's trying to destroy humanity and replace it with his own ideals. He wipes out the party in London and laughs at them when they aren't strong enough to fight him, in the end, he tries to take Fujimaru down with him. He's portrayed as evil from the start and continues his ambitions to the end. His presence is looming over us throughout the entire game and we know he's just laughing at us whenever we fail. That's good writing, he has a start and end to his arc, and we understand why he's evil.

Just saying "this character is evil" out of the blue does nothing. Especially when you do nothing with them. Raine's mom being evil only serves a purpose of giving the story a bad guy out of nowhere. (And giving a justification as to why she was demonized so much, beyond the fact she disagrees with Mary Sue, I mean Raine.)

There wasn't a deep history with her family and the magic book, there wasn't a connection between her mom and the book, there wasn't anything else we learned about her mom. Her mom could have been part of a cult with the book, or it could have been corrupting her, or maybe it was literally just a spell book because the family are mages. Anything is better than nothing.

If her mom was evil, then more should have been done with her character, she should have been stopping Raine, or manipulating Raine, if the book was the source of power, she should have realized it was gone and went after it, or let Raine keep it to be a successor of some cult. She is literally only evil so that Raine can continue looking like an angel who can do no wrong. If she wasn't evil and it was just a spell book, she still should have gone after it, or tried to find her daughter since some of the spells might be dangerous. This is character building 101, how do you fail so hard at character building 101?

If the start sucks, and the end sucks, you should stop:

It's bad enough the story starts with Raine treating herself like she's the lowest of low in poverty despite living the billionaire lifestyle. It's worse when the story ends with her feeling better about herself because she has magic now and can poof herself whatever she wants. Enabling behavior like hers isn't a good thing and should not be treated as a good ending.

Everyone hates it when the entitled spoiled brat gets what they want, ask Reddit, so why it's a good idea here is beyond me. I already went into how to fix this with Tales of Abyss' and My Next life as a Villainess' main protagonists, so I'm just going to say that if your character has no growth in the story, take the class a few more times before you publish your work. At least then you can say you tried and failed.

Don't make your self-insert story make you look like a terrible human being:

If it's one think Greg is great at, it's making himself look like an entitled whiny baby who can't handle being told "no". You should not be taking advice from Greg, trust me, his reputation is in the trash because he tried to victimize himself when he's the abuser.

Raine, being a reflection of the writer, makes the writer look horrible. She's making herself look like someone who can't be satisfied, no matter how much she's given, will demonize you if you disagree with her, will write an entire story about how you're pure evil and she's an angel, and will end that story with her getting everything she wants. That's not a good look.

I don't put myself into my characters, ocs are a different story, because I don't want my feelings placed in and look like a jackass. That's for my oc one-shots where I completely go wild. They're on my DA if you want to know. It's just venting in fantasy writing form. At least I try harder than not at all when I work on any character, I don't make anyone too whiny, call antagonists "pure evil" for no reason, or call themselves "pure good". I'm not stupid.

Conclusion:

Well, it's great to know most people aren't as stupid as the creator of "Song of Nature". They actually took the class and moved on to higher levels than sitting at the bottom and thinking that's all the education they need, and they failed the class. You need to put effort into your work, and if you don't do that, then it really shows.

Having no thought in creating a magic book plot and adding that the mother is evil is probably some of the worst writing I've seen as of late. The creator's other "original projects" aren't that great either and I've been avoiding saying the username just because I don't think they deserve any attention. I just want to rant about their horrid writing skills and how someone who knows what they're doing would fix it.